Books headed for Eek at the Northern Air Cargo Terminal
The Bright Lights Book Project: Sending Books to Alaskan Villages
Contributed by Alys Culhane
The good news came on a blustery March day. Pete, sitting at his computer, announced, “we got it!” I didn’t have to ask what “it” was because I knew what it was; US Senate appropriation funding that would enable us to continue to send books to Alaskan villages.
We’d applied for this appropriation in 2023. Senator Murkowski included the $25,000 request, which had just been passed by the House and the Senate. Pete and I examined the requests. We were the smallest budgeted item. The not so good news was this: the 2024 funds would not be allocated for several months. This meant that we’d have to wait some time before shipping books to villages. We’d hoped to have money on hand by this spring because schools will be closed during the summer. And we had books waiting to go.
What should we do? Pete and I examined the BLBP budget and determined that we had enough funds on hand to send some of the books to villages this spring. Our funding source would be financial contributions: our donors, community members. A dollar here, a dollar there, it had added up.
I sprang into action the following day. In the past, I’d called places on a list provided to me by the Carr Gottstein Company. This company included our books (gratis) with village food shipments. This time, I began my book placement queries by first focusing on the Village of Bethel, since this would be a single stop for freight shippers, should we get a request for a pallet load of books. In 2022, Northern Air Cargo donated cargo space for two pallets of books and library shelving, which we’d sent to Utqiaġvik.
An online search revealed that the Bethel Youth Facility would be a good fit. The facility consists of a detention Unit with a design capacity of twelve residents and a Treatment Unit with capacity of eleven residents. The majority of youth admitted to the Bethel Youth Facility are Alaska Natives. These young people come to the facility from a wide geographical area representing Utqiaġvik, Nome, Kotzebue, Fairbanks, Bethel, and the 56 villages of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. The BYF staff provide detention and treatment services in a manner respectful and supportive of the cultural backgrounds of the residents.
The BYF also has community partnerships, which I foresaw might later want books. These organizations include the Association of Village Counsel Presidents Community Partners Program, Orutsararmiut Native Council’s Healthy Families Program, and YKHC Family, Infants, and Toddlers Program. Treatment staff also work closely with staff at the Tundra Women’s Coalition, The City of Bethel, and local churches in providing community work service for residents.
I made a list of twenty Bethel schools and then winnowed my list to ten. The Akula Elitnaurvik School, in Kasigluk, was a good choice due to its location and student demographics. The school is located on the Johnson River about 25 miles due West of Bethel and about 60 miles inland from the Bering Sea. The residents value the traditional Yup'ik way of life (Yuuyaraq), which includes subsistence, Yup'ik dance, feasts, and community.
The village consists of a grocery store, hardware store, post office, clinic, Traditional Center, and police station, all located on the Akula side. Some people live on the Akiuk side (the original village) and some people live on the Akula side. The K-12 school has approximately 115 students and 23 staff members, which include 12 native and non-native teachers. The focus is on Dual Language instruction K-5; this ensures that the Yup'ik language is preserved. Principal Zuly Pitrie told me that the facility would welcome the acquisition of four boxes of boxes; these would be passed on to older students.
The next step in the BLBP Books to the Villages program involves preparing books for shipping. This was now just a matter of routine. BLBP volunteers had previously cleaned, stamped, and categorized our books by grade levels and placed them in Banker boxes. I placed four boxes of shelved books, destined for the Bethel Youth Facility, in a row. These Banker boxes held pre-school, picture, elementary, and middle school books.
A BLBP volunteer assisted me in taping the Lowe’s Shipping boxes. We then put bags in the boxes and boxes in the bags. I put BLBP bookmarks and brochures in the boxes. Another volunteer taped the boxes. I taped the labels on the boxes. We sent the boxes Media Mail the following day.
In three weeks, I’ll call the Bethel Youth Center and the Akula Elitnaurvik School in order to make sure that the books arrived okay and are what they requested. In the meantime, I’ll repeat the above process, first by contacting other village schools. Sending books to villages takes time and money.
If you are interested in either doing volunteer work, donating children’s books, or making a financial contribution, contact BLBP Executive Director Alys Culhane. Her email address is director@BrightLightsBookProject.org. Direct contributions can be made via our website: www. brightlightsbookproject.org.